You Know, Hans Scharoun?

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You Know, Hans Scharoun?

Siemensstadt and Wissenhofsiedlung: Considering Counter-Modernism in Scharoun’s Weimar Era Housing Chandler Millard Johnson

University of Houston Heins College of Architecture and Design Professor Ziad Qureshi Fall 2016

I have acted with honor and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.

Chandler M. Johnson

Johnson 2 In order to better comprehend the architectural work and ideas of the past, custodians of art and architectural history are forced to codify periods of unity among artists and architects, allowing for an understanding of history as a dialogue or even progression of ideas. In the contemporary architectural discourse, most commonly two methodologies are used in order to compare the work of architects, those being the period of the work, in reference to the time, place and historical circumstances surrounding its creation and the form of the architecture, its materials, textures and edges, spaces and flows. When an architect operates outside or near the end of a classification and when the work of an architect appears formally on the fringe of mainstream understanding, it can be difficult for the modern day intelligentsia to assimilate the ideas of that architect. 1 German architect Hans Scharoun is an example of an architect whose career spans the margins of the Weimar Era in Germany. Through an investigation into Hans Scharoun’s Siemensstadt estate, placing Siemensstadt within the unique temporal context of its conception, and by using formal analysis, Siemensstadt and the concepts and forms which distinguish Scharoun are clarified. Then, by a comparison of Scharoun’s work at Siemensstadt to Wissenhofsiedlung, through the lens of design intent, both large-scale and discreet differences between Hans Scharoun and his Weimar Era Modernist Contemporaries can be better understood, shedding light on an area of architectural history and a far lesser-known German Modernist Architect.

In 1893, Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun is born in Bremen, an urban city on the bank of the Weser River in north-western Germany. While still young, Scharoun’s family moves to the city of Bremerhaven, a town built on the maritime industry. Clearly sparking Scharoun’s immagination, Scharoun spends his youth around the busy port, gaining an intimate knowledge of the forms of iron and wood ships as they are built in the Bremerhaven shipyards. 2 Argued by

Johnson 3 many scholars, Scharoun’s architectural identity is linked to his experiences. As he walks to school, the sounds of steam trains delivering materials and hot rivets being hammered in to steel hulls hold his attention. Later in his life, Scharoun ultimately returns to these shipyards in order to source details as inspiration for his Breslau Apartments. 3 As Scharoun continues to grow, so does his awareness of the living conditions of the vast majority of urban working-class Germans.

A German newspaper cartoon (fig.1) in 1821 depicts a divisive infographic—an elucidative commentary on the disparity between densities in the largest cities in the 20’s. Scharoun’s upbringing, though not traditionally rooted in the arts, primes Scharoun for a careen both in social justice and design.

Having been born in 1893, Scharoun is considerably younger than the vast majority of his Weimar Era colleagues. A common understanding of the European Modernist Movement in the early 20th century places Modern architects in two generations: the early pioneers, who dominate the period between the turn of the century and the First World War, born in the 1860’s, such as Herman Muthesius 1861, Peter Behrens 1868, Hans Poelzig 1869 and Adolf Loos 1870, and the second generation who ultimately define the visually modern architecture so readily identified today who are born in the 1880s, those being Hans Scharoun’s mentor and confidant Hugo Häring 1882, Bruno Taut 1880, Water Gropius and Theo Van Doesburg 1883, Mies van der Rohe 1886, Le Corbusier 1887 and Gerrit Rietveld 1888. 4 Following the peloton of second generation European Modernists is Scharoun, who is born six years behind Le Corbusier. While certainly in a contemporary context a six year age differential is seemingly innocuous, but the political climate of early 20th century Germany means that Scharoun will almost certainly be enlisted in World War I, and he ultimately is.

Johnson 4 As a young man, Scharoun decides that he wants to become an architect. Scharoun spends his free time drawing and sketching the local architecture and through his drawings Scharoun is given an awareness of Bremerhaven’s extreme density, disproportionate amount of automobile and human traffic, poor housing conditions and overcrowding. 5 A floorplan (fig.2) of a typical mid-rise apartment block depicts the sardine-like city living conditions in Germany at that time. Dark interior courtyards are the norm in terms of daylighting, and Scharoun believes he can do better. 1911, Scharoun enters his first architectural competition, and in 1912, he is admitted to the Technische Hochschule, a technical architectural school. When war breaks out in 1914, Scharoun enters the German military services and after a year is appointed as assistant to the district architect for the rebuilding of Prussia, Paul Kruchen. In this capacity, Scharoun is able to survive the Great War despite losing both of his brothers.

After the War, Scharoun is released from duty and enters a period of reflection. Scharoun marries Aenne Hoffmeyer, the daughter of his early mentor, and despite being rejected by the architectural academy for his senior year, Scharoun elects to continue reconstruction work as private architect in East Prussia with his former superior, Paul Kruchen. In 1919, Scharoun ambitiously enters three architectural competitions and successfully gains national recognition winning the Prenzlau cathedral design competition. It is noted by one critic that this project combines formal and informal arrangements in order to connect a cathedral and marketplace as a series of outdoor rooms (fig.3) but with great subtlety in three dimensions and in its handling of multiple facades and rooflines. 6 Scharoun’s perspective rendering for the project (fig.4) places the Prenzlau Cathedral obliquely in the center, surrounded by shops and loggia which encircle an “outdoor room” in an Italian piazza-like condition. The buildings are rendered in highly saturated oranges, blues, greens and yellows, and heavy shadow casting by a fast-moving pen create

Johnson 5 ecstatic vibrations where the sunrays meet the building’s surfaces. This particular work gains the attention of Bruno Taut in Berlin. 7 Taut writes to Scharoun requesting his signature on a manifesto advocating the use of color in architecture—Scharoun naturally obliges. This is the beginning of Scharoun’s relationship with Taut, and their relationship validates Scharoun’s recognition as a noteworthy architect in Europe.

At this point in 1919, Bruno Taut is in the midst of forming the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council for Art). He and Walter Gropius see Scharoun as an asset. The Workers Council for Art movement begins as a union of architects, painters and sculptors based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921 who develop as a response to a new kind of Germany. For so long Germany had been in an extreme state of poverty and political chaos, but after the war, freedom from oppression creates a sense of hope in Germans resulting in a rash of Utopian idealism. 8 For the working class who had survived the war, this period of time brings great promise. Germans are idealistic about socialism, which they see as a key to new and better world, and German intellectual life teams with notions of possibility, the new, and breaking from the past. A flyer from The Workers Council for Art reads, Art and the people must from an entity. Art shall no longer be a luxury of a few but should be enjoyed and experienced by the broad masses. The aim is an alliance of the arts under the wind of great architecture. 9 The Council’s platform is clearly defined as making all buildings public and for the community, abolishing private buildings, end the elitist Academy of the Arts and Prussian National Art Commission, promote museums, and create state body to promote education in the arts. The Council both crystalizes and is the manifestation the growing German sentiment toward access to

Johnson 6 art and the fundamental mistrust of the wealthy at this point. Out of this coalition, another important one grows.

Der Ring (The Ring) is founded in 1926 by 16 architects including father of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Bruno Taut, Hugo Haring and Hans Scharoun. Dubbed “The Ring� due to its lack of organizational hierarchy, it functions for a few years without an executive, united solely by the desire to promote Modernist architecture. The Ring is both similar and different to the Workers Art Council in its views toward the future. Similar to the Workers Art Council, The Ring still fundamentally values equitable housing, a search for the new beginning in building design and even more importantly, the search for a new way of building.

Unlike the Workers Art Council, The Ring does not have an elaborated platform. This results in members with fundamentally different attitudes about the principles of modernism. Where Mies and Gropius were more interested in the possibly of multi-purpose spaces, Haring and Scharoun are far more ensconced in individual spaces and their relationship to the whole. These differences and impending German Nazism would prove too much for The Ring, and it dissolves in 1933.

Siemensstadt The case study of Siemensstadt takes place just two years before The Ring dissolves. Via The Ring, Hans Scharoun receives a commission by the Siemens building society to design a housing complex which sits in the north-west corner of the city adjacent to the Siemens factory.

In its original form, Siemensstadt would serve the Siemens employees and their families, ideally making life easier by reducing commutes and ensuring healthy living conditions for workers. 10 This social equitability is a theme directly in line with Scharoun’s upbringing. As an innovative

Johnson 7 social housing typology, Siemensstadt would leave the unsanitary and overcrowded tenements of old Germany for spacious flats with plenty of daylight, airy rooms, public gardens, balconies, and modern sanitary facilities. Once the project is actualized, Siemensstadt becomes a cooperative endeavor between public sector government and the private sector industry, headed up by German city planner Martin Wagner. For this reason, the streets are aptly named after prominent German scientists and invertors, ultimately providing the complex with a sense of identity.

Siemensstadt is comprised of 2,080 residences, designed by six Der Ring architects, Hans Scharoun, Hugo Haring, Walter Gropius, Otto Bartning, P.R. Henning and Fred Forbat.

Scharoun, as the manager of the urban master plan, develops a concept for the estate which contains many green areas, a trend started by Scharoun which can ultimately be found reemerging in postwar Allied housing design. Scharoun’s original concept for Siemensstadt is to group buildings into pre-determined neighborhood units. This concept is arguably loosely related to an augmentation of the interior courtyard spaces of the tenements of Scharoun’s youth.

Scharoun’s interest in “community shaping” permeates his site design. Scharoun emphasizes the community’s access to Siemensstadt’s entrance with two adjacent buildings which mirror each other with sharp angles, designating a formal entrance. These buildings point to the railway underpass and create a linkage to the neighboring industrial area. The resulting triangular, “funnel” shaped space feeds Siemensstadt’s residents and visitors past a long grove of old trees and into the center of Siemensstadt. Considering this, preservation of a large portion of the existing old tree population emphasizes the rural character of the site, once again resulting in a constructed identity for Siemensstadt.

Johnson 8 While unified by Der Ring, the architects functioning at Siemensstadt remain diverse in their work. The architects take a vote and elect to design in the Zeilenbau method, one which imposes a rather strict grid of parallel long-axis north-south housing bars of medium to high density. Idealistically, Zeilenbau maximizes access to daylight, in parallel linear strips, with green spaces being placed between the blocks. All units contain balconies in order to take advantage of fresh air and daylight ensuring each unit is mutually healthful. Further, Zeilenbau is a potentially acceptable compromise for Der Ring architects to work within a set of parameters while preserving their own stylistic individuality. While on paper, this compromise seems fair, it can be inferred that Scharoun preferred an alternate organizational approach as he mentions another strategy later in his career.

The Stadtlandschaft first arose as a response to the special topographical quality of the site, reaching its crowning glory in the hands of the sensitive masterbuilders of the Baroque. Prague is the perfect combination of genius loci and built development, as convincing in its minor parts as in its major… whose variety extends the expressive roof… widening and narrowing… exaggerate the play of surface, rhythm and human imagination… 11 From this, one can determine Scharoun was forced to make concessions in the name of unity.

The Siemensstadt site in plan (fig.5) contains 21 individual rows of housing split and clustered on the site by architect. Scharoun’s concept for the overall site plan was selected as it both took special care to preserve the mature trees a responded well to the newly installed S-Bahn, an influential parameter which manifests in the architecture via one of Scharoun’s curvilinear housing blocks. Beginning with the north-west cluster, Walter Gropius elects to design a single long rectilinear bar with a small perpendicular L which protrudes west at the southern end of the

Johnson 9 long bar. Both at the macro level and the micro level, Gropian rectalinearity is visible in the angle which the two bars meet and in the articulation of the balconies and windows in each unit.

(Fig.4) In essence, the Gropius housing block only responds to two factors, aligning with the street condition and facing north-south as agreed upon in the Zeilenbau. In an almost clinical fashion, Gropius is able to attach more and more units in row with this methodology. This method results in extremely long residential blocks, though Gropius has in his mind that access to the various rooms will be made through a central corridor, in an attempt to avoid passing environments. To the north, the residual Gropian block allows the addition of a public stair which leads to the central space, a public park. Contrastingly, Scharoun reserved for himself the more difficult irregular southwest corner which is bifurcated by railway. Scharoun decides to create three contrasting linear blocks which he calls Panzerkreuzer, each four stories, and each angling resulting in more dynamic green spaces than the other Zeilenbau blocks. Each façade is unique, though the material and visual texture, white-painted stone, a playful patterned quiltwork of smaller and larger rectangular windows (fig.5) and recessed balconies unify each of the three forms.

The work of Der Ring architects at Siemensstadt is most congruous at site plan level. As the building forms are examined one level closer, the respective architect’s individualism is made visible. One more “zooming”, and examination of the unit plans (fig.6), makes the divergence among architects even more clear. Beginning with Otto Bartning’s unit scheme, Bartning effectively designs one unit with four radiating rooms which increase in size around a central entry foyer. His unit is then flipped symmetrically about a common stair in order to produce a binary module. The larger of the rooms in both units has one balcony which serves to tie each binary module to the next. The stacking of modules vertically and horizontally produces

Johnson 10 a hyper-rational grid of street-facing balconies and overhangs, which like shoelace grommets, visually expresses the edge of a binary module through a detail. Bartning’s unit is particularly efficient in its consolidation of utilities along a common back “wet-wall”. This strength can also be seen as a shortcoming, as users of the auxiliary bedroom are forced to walk through the kitchen in order to access the bathroom, and the balcony is only able to serve the larger of the bedrooms. Häring, whose unit plan utilizes the same mirrored binary module as Bartning, resolves this functional awkwardness by placing the bathroom between the two larger bedroom quarters. While this option may seem superior, Häring’s units somehow lose the pinwheel-eque elegance of the Bartning design through the necessary addition of a tight central hallway space for bathroom access, a mixing of the progressively larger spaces, and the doubling of utilities on both sides of the block. Continuing to review these unit plans reveals one universal design complication for all of the architects at Siemensstadt, while no doubt superior to the standard model of typical Weimar Era tenement housing blocks, the programmatic decision to universally provide a balcony to all units, as well as equitably accessible bathrooms, while designing within the established Modern pinwheel format, leaves something to be desired for residents. Even Walter Gropius differs to this design format, reducing design to a menu of tradeoffs. In Gropius’ unit pan, apartment dwellers are spiraled inward through a hallway, accessing separate rooms as they move toward the center of the unit. Gropius manages to provide tenants equal access to the balcony by attaching it to a public living quarter, and a public bathroom serves all the rooms equally, being joined only to the spiral corridor. While slightly better than Bartning’s plan, Gropius still fails to group utilities along a common wet-wall, and spatially, lacks efficiency, as much of the unit’s area is dedicated to circulation space.

Johnson 11 Scharoun’s unit plan is fundamentally different from the others. Scharoun begins by designing not within the Zeilenbau but instead within his own organic hybrid. In doing so, linear hallways lose their compositional magnitude, which when viewed in the other architect’s plans, is substantial. Moving away from the long directional circulation hallway, Scharoun instead opts for a square vestibule. The vestibule plays a dichotomous role, first as arbiter of flow, redirecting tenants 90 degrees as they enter, transitioning them from the outside to the inside, and secondly as a linkage to the common access bathroom. Utilizing the entry vestibule in this way, frees up enough space within the same unit area to allow a common living room to serve as circulation to the bedrooms and kitchen. Like a domino effect, this crucial design decision, the square entry vestibule, makes waves through the unit’s ultimate design. The circulatory public living room makes placement of the kitchen on the same wall as the bathroom possible, resulting in the elusive common wet-wall, and furthermore, equitable access to the public balcony is achieved via the common living room. The cohesive achievement of all these design factors in a unified organic, non-linear composition is what makes Scharoun’s units so natural, but also avant-garde.

Scharoun and his wife Aenne live in one of his flats at Siemensstadt for over 30 years, a decision emblematic of his commitment to quality architecture and a testament to his belief in the possibilities of post-war Berlin.

Weissenhofsiedlung Superseding Siemensstadt is Weissenhofsiedlung. As with Siemensstadt, Scharoun is selected to participate in the Weissenhofsiedlung Exhibition through his membership in Der Ring. Perhaps the most diverse exhibition of Modernist single and multi-family housing, the architects participating at Weissenhofsiedlung can be understood as falling in to two orders—

Johnson 12 “type-house designers”, such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Hilberseimer and Gropius, and the “site-specific designers” who are responding more closely to the given site, including Scharoun, Rading, and Poelzig. 12 Within this division in approach, each architect maintains their own individuality, only unifying their work via response to site conditions, or not, and by their applied white color. In Le Corbusier’s case, he responds to his five points of architecture, Mies is considering his flexible apartment and Gropius and Hilberseimer are considering the grid as a system to accommodate prefabricated portions. Peter Behrens is working with a proportion system of resonant diagonals based on the method of Thiersch and Oud 13 while Bruno Taut investigates small-scale domestic planning. Due to the liberation of tradition exhibited at Weissenhofsiedlung and “Wild West” experimentation with residential architecture, contemporary architectural scholars consider it a multifaceted victory for many in the Modernist movement 14, an architectural jewlbox in its own right, though this nuanced duality in consideration of site is often overlooked.

The Process Scharoun’s work at Weissenhofsiedlung (fig.7), while designed for a single family of four, mirrors and very much foreshadows his work at Siemensstadt. Scharoun is given the eastern-most plat at the Siedlung, between Rathenaustrasse and Hölzelweg. It is important to note that Scharoun’s design is produced iteratively, and Scharoun ultimately selects his fourth iteration as his final. While an investigation of the unbuilt iterations would prove an interesting study, for the sake of comparison, Scharoun’s built house at Weissenhofsiedlung will serve as the benchmark comparandum. Scharoun’s final version is a visibly free-standing, detached form.

Its shapes and planes appear to fold and intersect, likely influenced by De Stijl. Visually striking

Johnson 13 is a curvature which responds to the stair, which moves from the top right of the elevation inward toward the center. This curvilinear gesture almost certainly foreshadows Expressionism in architecture and again reemerges in mid-century Deconsructivist imagery. Also unique to the Scharoun house, the composition is embedded in the landscape via garden walls which rise from the ground and integrate with the houses form. A canopy which projects over the glorified balcony, or dining terrace, allows for the adaptive enclosure of the upper story, mirroring the garden walls, effectively doubling the houses response to the site’s curved landscape condition.

The site’s corner condition permeates the interior of the house as well. Through adjusting the houses floors to the topography and rounding the interior rooms within the boundary of the site around a rectangular central public living space, Scharoun celebrates the landscape, making the house identifiably designed as site specific. Integral to both to the Weissenhofsiedlung house and Siemensstadt unit, Scharoun’s primary interior module is the rectangular interior family space which is multi-purpose, reduces hallway circulation, and contains a balcony. Scharoun’s process identifies this zone as primary to the “livability” of the composition, 15 then surrounds this zone with the careful spatial relationships to program which respond tightly to the conditions of the site. This careful consideration of landscape and placing public space at the center can be seen as a stark differentiation between Scharoun and the most notable players in Modernism, particularly those who subscribe to the International Style. While Mies and Gropius design the iconically flexible modular plans which can be built and rebuilt in any city, Scharoun’s work is directly antithetical.

In these ways, Scharoun can be seen as a champion of a counter-Modernist movement which emerges in the architectural discourse. This architectural movement is one deeply rooted in landscape response and spatiality, a sense of social equity and the ethical treatment of people,

Johnson 14 and a sensuality in domestic scale. These principles are almost entirely overshadowed by the mainline Modernists. In Weimar Germany Scharoun operates, quietly exploring this process without much fanfare. Careful not to venture too far outside the bounds of this research one cannot help but unearth the nuanced similarities with Frank Lloyd Wright in the West, and Alvar Aalto in Scandinavia, through one-off exemplars like the House at Bear Run or the Baker House Dormitories. Scharoun’s subtle manipulation and experimentation with form, appreciation of landscape and commitment to social equality should be something celebrated and learned from.

Johnson 15 Images

Fig.1 Right Side, Germany, mid-twenties, comic

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Fig.2 Typical Rent House in Berlin, 1890, plan

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Fig.3 Competition-winning design for the cathedral square at Prenzlau, 1920, plan

Fig.4 Competition-winning design for the cathedral square at Prenzlau, 1920, perspective

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Fig.5 Siemensstadt, site plan

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Fig.4 Gropius’s Siemensstadt block, photograph

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Fig.5 Scharoun’s Siemensstadt block, photograph

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Fig.6 Siemensstadt Plans, Bartning (top left) Häring (top right) Gropius (bottom left) Scharoun (bottom right)

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Fig.7 Scharoun’s House at Weissenhofsiedlung, plans (left), historical photograph (right)

Johnson 23 Endnotes 1

Blundell-Jones, Peter, and Hans Scharoun. Hans Scharoun. London: Phaidon Press, 1995. p.18

2

Knobloch, Stefan. Presentation. Proceedings of Scharoun-Colloquium, Akademie Der Künste, Berlin, October 1993.

3

Hans Scharoun to Georg Claussen. October 1927. Wesermunde.

4

Blundell-Jones, Peter, and Hans Scharoun. Hans Scharoun. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.

5

Ibid.

6

Wilhelm Jung, Stadtbaukunst alter und neuer Zeit, Pfankuch, 1974.

7

Blundell-Jones, Peter, and Hans Scharoun. Hans Scharoun. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.

8

Ibid.

9

"German Art Movements of the Early 20th Century." Arthistoryarchive.com. January 2013. Accessed October 2016. http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/european/German-Art-Movements-of-theEarly-20th-Century.html.

10

Qureshi, Ziad. "The Social City." Lecture, ARCH 6359, University of Houston, Houston, September 6, 2016.

11

Scharoun, Hans. "Speech." Speech, Berlin Plant Exhibition, Berlin, May 9, 1946. In Hans Scharoun.

London: Phaidon Press. 109+.

12

Blundell-Jones, Peter, and Hans Scharoun. Hans Scharoun. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.

13

Ibid.

14

Kirsch, Karin, Die Wissenhofsiedlung: Werkbunf-Ausstellung “Die Wohnung”, Stuttgart 1927, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Stuttgart: (English edition) Rizzoli, 1989.

15

Blundell-Jones, Peter, and Hans Scharoun. Hans Scharoun. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.